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Govt’s Indian Ocean gambit gathers pace

Ahead of PM Narendra Modi's visit to China in May, the government's Indian Ocean gambit is gathering momentum like it has never before.

| TNN | Updated: Feb 18, 2015, 07:11 IST

NEW DELHI: Ahead of PM Narendra Modi's visit to China in May, the government's Indian Ocean gambit is gathering momentum like it has never before. India has hardly merited consideration until now as a serious player in the maritime great game but that could all be changing with the government lining successive engagements with its neighbours spread across the Indian Ocean region.
In the latest instance, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj left Tuesday for Oman where she is expected to focus on anti-piracy operations in Indian Ocean. While India Monday signed a civil nuclear agreement with Sri Lanka, which the government expects will restore its primacy for the Indian Ocean island, Maldives foreign minister Dunya Maumoon quietly flew into New Delhi a day earlier to discuss with Swaraj the agenda for the upcoming visit by Modi to the archipelago.

Swaraj will also visit Colombo in the first week of March to ?cull out talking points for Modi's return visit to Sri Lanka. Modi himself will embark on a four-nation Indian Ocean yatra, perhaps one of the most ambitious visits ever undertaken by an Indian prime minister, starting March 10.

Apart from Sri Lanka, Modi will also visit Maldives, Mauritius and Seychelles. New Delhi's most concerted Indian Ocean outreach is attributable also to how Modi and Swaraj have worked in tandem to execute engagements with these strategically located islands which have not shied away in the past from playing China against India.

Modi's China visit in May is likely to be one of his toughest foreign policy assignments in the first year of his tenure as PM.? A successful Indian Ocean tour with a focus on increasing security and military cooperation with the smaller island neighbours will help Modi negotiate with the Chinese from a position of strength.

India has rarely shown such gumption with its neighbours in that region in the past but there's also another message New Delhi is seeking to convey - that it is possible for giant nations to have peaceful, mutually beneficial relations with their maritime neighbours. Unlike the case with China, India's relations with its neighbours across vast bodies of water are not marred by maritime disputes.

Despite India's reservations over China's maritime silk road? project, which entails port-building activities at several places in Indian Ocean, most of these countries India is reaching out to have accepted the Chinese proposal for economic benefits and equally to increase their bargaining power with geographically nearer New Delhi.

India continues to nurse deep insecurities about the project, an initiative of President Xi Jinping. Swaraj said during her visit to China in February that it may not be possible for India to give a "blanket endorsement" to the maritime silk road. Chinese submarines' forays into Indian Ocean recently and their docking at the port in Colombo particularly have hardly been of any help.

New Delhi is actually working to blunt the force of China's proposal by choosing to highlight its own maritime history including India's central role in what it calls spice and mausam routes. The government has looked to impart a strategic content to the culture ministry's Project Mausam, a transnational initiative meant to revive India's ancient maritime routes and cultural linkages with countries in the Indian Ocean.

As the government said last year in Lok Sabha, it will enable collaboration between "regional researchers, improve accessibility and dissemination of knowledge across India as well as other countries in the Indian Ocean region in future".

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